Peggy Parish; Her Books Sold 7 Million Copies

Peggy Parish, the author of dozens of popular, educational and entertaining children’s books, many of which featured the well-intentioned but inept maid Amelia Bedelia, has died at age 61.

She died Friday of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm at a hospital in Manning, S.C., her birthplace.

She wrote about 30 books that sold more than 7 million copies, but the most popular of them were the 11 that included Amelia, who creates fields of foolishness from small pieces of good intentions.

Asked to weed the family garden, Amelia plants dozens of weeds. Asked to help plant bulbs, she tries to sow light bulbs. She is asked to prepare a spongecake for dinner and tries to cook a sponge into it. Back in the garden she sews instead of sows grass seed onto a bare spot on the lawn and stakes new plants by tying pieces of steak to them.

Through all this well-intentioned chaos, she remains a beloved and devoted family member.

Although never married, Miss Parish had a lifelong love of children and received and answered nearly 100 letters a day from her young fans, said her brother, Dr. H. S. Parish Jr.

Miss Parish was a former teacher who wrote for children because they “get down to the basics and they love simple situations,” her brother said.

“She was just enthralled with kids and she had no greater pleasure than telling stories at schools and writing books.”

This year, Miss Parish’s publishers invited schoolchildren to send greetings celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first book about Amelia Bedelia.

A spokesman for the publisher, William Morrow & Co., said thousands of letters and drawings have been received since the request went out in August.

In addition to the Amelia Bedelia series, Miss Parish (born Margaret Cecile Parish) also was the author of such books as “The Cats’ Burglar,” “Dinosaur Time,” “The Ghosts of Cougar Island,” “Good Hunting Little Indian,” “Hermit Dan” and “Let’s Be Early Settlers With Daniel Boone.”